A possible alternative was discussed on HN half a year ago:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550764
Check it out, it's great!
Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
211–220 of 332 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your post is key. I would be interested in anyone posting what they think is an economically viable path to challenging Google. Pretty much the one company that has done it at scale (Microsoft) isn't exactly eating Google's lunch (though I think there are a few areas that Bing is better). It would just take at astronomical amount of capital to challenge Google at generic Internet search, and the few organizat…
Surely the only viable path to challenging Google is to own the web browser. Most users will use the default search engine.
I would have thought this back in 2005, but eventually IE did fall. If users eventually dropped IE, why can't they also learn about Kagi or DDG or bing?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#213The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index. Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc. At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel. Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-da…
You know, if that were the only roadblock, I wish someone would take the top 10,000 Google queries and just manually curate them. Hire different interest groups -- outdoors, travel, cuisine, etc. -- and manually find the best hits buried deep in some subreddit. No fancy algorithms, just old-fashioned librarian-style research, but constantly updated with the latest findings and queries.
Would happily pay for that... even if it only has 5% of the coverage of Google, that's fine because Google is like 95% noise anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#214The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index. Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc. At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel. Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-da…
Somewhat related is how there is a whole generation of people that think they are entitled to finding information on a search engine, or a web indexed accessible source, and if its not there then it must not exist! I see this in discussions a lot where many times the answer is that the data doesn't exist, but thats not satisfactory to the person making the challenging.
Anecdotally, I'm in a couple+ tech (ish) groups on FB. More and more the questions posted are obviously by passing internet search (e.g.,Google) and going right to the group. Simple shit that people simply can't be bothered to search for, and they don't even bother with the FB group search. Imho, this behaviour wastes too much of the groups' collective bandwidth.
So not only has FB hoarded the infomation, but it has no incentive to fix the group experience (e.g., prompt an input for group search during the asking bit) as it keeps engagement up.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#215Lots of competitors have emerged or are emerging. No single one can or maybe even should take over the mantle.
Google’s death will come not from some upstart search engine, but from many walled gardens that each have perfectly good topical search inside them. We’re already in a case where different kinds of information are checked at different destinations.
Google will keep trying valiantly to more aggressively turn into a knowledge base instead of a search engine, and ultimately will probably settle at being an interactive encyclopaedia.
The internet has moved past search engines. Now if you want information you need to know or figure out where to ask the question.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#216> Despite all the posts about the declining quality of Google We assume people in general are dissatisfied with Google, because there are blog posts about it, and some people on HN agree, and because we have certain strongly held beliefs and technical knowledge that lead us to this conclusion. What we have not validated is whether people outside the tech community are as dissatisfied as we are. If they aren't willing…
I don't know anyone outside of HN who talks about bad google search results. The ones I know using other search engines are doing it for privacy or anti-monopoly reasons. Only HN seem to remember the glory days when Google always delivered exactly what you need before the continuous decline that warrants several of these 100+ comments threads a week for 10 years. For me today as in yesterday it is just a decent search engine that works as I expect
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#217Did you notice Google's monopoly over online ads? Competitors can't make money. It's literally called anti-competitive.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
This could be a niche search engine for advanced users, but I feel that to average users this would be a strictly worse experience because they have no interest in figuring out how to "select an algorithm." They expect to type a query and the result they want comes up at the top. The search engine should be able to infer whether the user wants results that are more recent, more interactive, more authoritative, etc. b…
I agree, it’s the classic example of “people don’t really like choice”. When you are presented with the option of a search algo, there’s always this feeling that you chose wrong . It’s an additional thing to think about, and makes things more complicated.
it doesn't have to be an irreversible choice. clicking between 'filters' should be something that takes an instant, and is one click away.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#219The internet is too different now to what Google (or any SE) was designed to index. Too much of the up-to-date high value information is posted onto semi-public channels. Like facebook groups, instagram posts, telegram channels, etc. At the same time, too much of the publicly available websites are becoming clickbait and mindless marketing drivel. Just try to research anything slightly obscure that has to be up-to-da…
You know, if that were the only roadblock, I wish someone would take the top 10,000 Google queries and just manually curate them. Hire different interest groups -- outdoors, travel, cuisine, etc. -- and manually find the best hits buried deep in some subreddit. No fancy algorithms, just old-fashioned librarian-style research, but constantly updated with the latest findings and queries. Would happily pay for that... e…
+1 I see this repeated over and over in tech where an algo is great but why not manually craft the top value queries?
Like with smart speakers, why not manually add a bunch of interactions? You can do it yourself in settings by adding a phrase and desired response, why not have the team adding a bunch they would want?
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't there a Google competitor emerging?
#220I think that has more to do with the information source than the market.
It's possible HN is an unreliable guide to Google's actual prospects.